vourer of bibles and epics. He is called a blind and silly optimist by those who overlook the fact that he has made a clean breast of more evil in himself and his countrymen than any other writer had admitted as existing; and his optimism is said to depend upon his championship of vulgarity and mediocrity. It is true that he seems to rely a great deal upon the "divine average." But, then, his standards are not so low. He is not such a facile leveler. His specimen of the average man, what he means by the average man, is Ulysses Grant, is Abraham Lincoln. Whitman adores America because she produces such men, and he clamors for shoals of them—poets, orators, scholars—of the same bulk and build and aplomb. He will not be satisfied till he sees a hundred million of such superb persons, such aristocrats, walking these States. He is a democrat with an exorbitant thirst for distinction, of heroic mold, elate with a vision of grandeurs and glories, of majesties and splendors—like every good democrat with a spark of imagination.
I have set forth some of the main points in Whitman's system of ideas, but I recall his warning: "Do not attempt to explain me; I cannot explain myself." And certainly his service to us is neither contained nor containable in an argument. He gives us the sustaining emotion which prevents argument from falling to pieces of its own dryness. He fulfills the promises and justifies the faith of demo-
